


Thus Opened the Hearts of Many

by The_Furthest_City_Light



Category: Naruto
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-28
Updated: 2016-05-01
Packaged: 2018-06-05 00:18:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,481
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6681892
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Furthest_City_Light/pseuds/The_Furthest_City_Light
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A one-shot anthology: Naruto touches the hearts of people, and changes them in the process. Or, the people who love Naruto discover it in different ways, time and again, and across lifetimes. A series of one-shots about how Naruto's precious people came to love him. Gen. Canon Relationships.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Uzumaki Kushina

Uzumaki Kushina waited impatiently for the stick to turn, tapping it against the sink to get it to go faster.

She was sure it would come back negative. She was sure.

The only reason she was testing in the first place was because she was late and she'd thrown up three times in two days. It was probably just a bug, but she wanted to be sure.

She and Minato were not trying to get pregnant at the moment. Not that they were _opposed_ to the idea, but there was too much going on right now. Besides, her being a Jinchurriki meant there was a certain risk involved. Minato was still trying to establish himself as Hokage, bringing a child into the matter would complicate things.

Still. She wasn't stupid. The throwing up could be morning sickness, and she was four days late now.

She tapped the stick a little harder, trying to focus on not using any chakra-enhanced strength rather than the outcome of the test.

Just thirty more seconds.

She looked.

One of the bathroom tiles cracked under her feet as her chakra reacted to her emotions.

A child.

Dear kami, she was pregnant.

What was she going to _do?_ She'd just been promoted to ANBU. Pregnant women were not allowed in the corps. They were too valuable to the village. And she'd probably end up taking at least a couple months to recover from the pregnancy and get back into shape after the kid was born. So…a full year off, at minimum? How was she going to keep her skills up? What would Minato think about this? Could they even afford child-care when she was away for missions and Minato was of Hokage-ing or whatever the proper verb was? Perhaps Minato could sic the ANBU on their kid...?

She fought to keep her breathing calm as she placed a hand on her belly. It was flat. There was no evidence of a child.

But it was there. She could feel it with chakra, as energy that normally routed to the seal containing the kyuubi instead fed to a tiny cluster of cells. It was vibrating.

The baby was too early in development to have a nervous system, and much too young to have a chakra network, let alone the coils. Still…everything alive had chakra, down to the very last cell. And chakra reacted to chakra. She connected hers with the baby's developing system gently, just barely brushing the child.

The answering flare sent her to her knees, right there on the bathroom floor.

Because _oh_ , it was so bright, so innocent, so very beautiful. Her eyes closed and she tried to picture the baby. It was a boy, she was fairly certain. Blond hair, blue eyes, and a happy smile that resembled Minato's and a mischievous grin that reminded Kushina of herself. His face would be like her father's—round through childhood, before narrowing into a strong square jaw as he grew older.

He would be bright, and kind. He would be everything, _everything_ she could ever want in a child. Someone who played pranks, who cleaned up the mess afterword, and who viewed respect as something earned, not freely given. Stubborn, bull-headed. Someone who loved easily, and more kindly than she herself did. Charismatic like Minato. Genuine like him too.

Everything in her _ached_ with a need to hold this baby, to see him, to love him.

This was a change she'd been unprepared for—one she'd never expected. Women often said a child changes a person, but she'd never understood.

Now she did.

This—this feeling, like absolutely nothing but this one child mattered, was all-consuming. This child was _hers_ , hers and Minato's and Kushina would be damned if she let anything happen to such a precious baby.

She cried. Just one single, joyful tear, as everything about who she was changed to revolve around the adorable little parasite she was carrying.

"Hello, baby." She whispered, smiling. "I'm your mommy."

* * *

She was choking on her own blood.

Well, that and a few other things were wrong with her.

Kushina wanted to ask Minato if it had worked, if their baby was safe and if his future was secured. But she was afraid it had, and if it did then Minato was gone.

She wanted no confirmation that Minato had beaten her to the grave. That would break her, and in the last few moments of her life she could afford to be a coward but she couldn't afford to break.

Kushina became vaguely aware that someone was moving her, trying to get her to respond. She tried speaking, but she couldn't get enough air. She tried to focus her eyes instead.

There was a face she absolutely had to see again before she died.

She swung her gaze clumsily. Her eyes seemed to be impossible to control. She couldn't keep her gaze locked.

There. The altar was right there. Her baby was there too. Hers. Her little Naruto. The most precious creature in the world.

"Baby," she finally breathed. "Where…?"

It was only when Sandaime-sama picked the newborn up and brought him to her that she noticed he was there.

She couldn't move her arms, or she would have held them out to take her child one last time.

Kushina did not cry. The energy expended would be a waste, and it would cloud her vision of her child.

Sarutobi-sama said something. It was not important enough to answer him.

"Naruto…" she whispered. She wanted so badly to be there for him, to be his mother. "My baby…"

Kami there was so much to say. So much she would never get to do for her child, and so much that now might never be done.

And he was a Jinchurriki. She alone knew the pain that brought. She would not be there to protect him. He had to have love, he absolutely had to. Someone must fill him with love, fill the hole in his heart that the Kyuubi wrought just as Minato did for her.

This was one last thing she could do for him. She could make sure he was loved.

She tore her gaze from the baby, expending measured seconds to give him this one last thing. She locked eyes with Sarutobi-sama, demanding he listen to this last directive by her force of will.

"Make him loved, Sandaime-sama," she ordered as fiercely as she could manage. "Let him be _loved_."

She said it hungrily, desperately, but didn't dwell on it. Instead she returned her gaze to the most important thing in the world.

 _Naruto_ , she wanted to say, but she had no more air to spend. _I love you like no one has loved before_.

For what could she do but love her child? She'd spent so much time alone. She was a foreigner and a Jinchurriki; she knew what it was to be alone.

She wanted so much better for Naruto.

She couldn't focus on that. She would not die in despair. She would die as she lived—looking forward, finding hope, and holding it.

Naruto was going to be great. She could feel it. With their deaths, she and Minato bought him the tools he needed to meet his destiny and battle it down. It was worth it. It had to be.

She was Uzumaki Kushina of Uzushio and Konoha, and the Jinchurriki of the Kyuubi no Kitsune, an elite shinobi, wife of the Yondaime Hokage and mother of a baby named Naruto.

She died thinking that last accomplishment was the most important of all the things she'd ever done.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is going to be a series of one shots. Kind of a character study about the people who love Naruto and Naruto himself. There's no overarching plot. I also don't know if I'm going to do /all/ the people who love Naruto. Lets face it, that's a lot of people by the end of the series. Some are probably going to be pretty humorous, but there's going to be a wide variety. Most will also be longer than this, since Kushina really needed no convincing to love her baby. Minato is next, and I'm excited. He's a personal favorite of mine.
> 
> Thanks for reading, and I'd love to hear what you thought!


	2. Namikaze Minato

Minato was thrilled when he found out.

Well, thrilled and terrified. But mostly thrilled.

He had been making dinner when his wife walked into the living room and said they were having a baby, that it was most definitely going to be a boy, and he was going to look like Minato and act like both of them but mostly Kushina, and he had better be excited about it or a pregnant Red Hot Habanero was going to kick the Yellow Flash's ass.

"Of course I'm excited," he exclaimed, kissing her again, "but how do you know what he'll be like?" Kushina just rolled her eyes.

"Because I'm his mother, baka! And besides, why would he act like you? I'm way cooler!"

And for a while he absolutely couldn't breathe for happiness, because the thought of a kid like that just seemed so right, so perfect, that he could feel something tight building in his chest. A sort of weird combination of anticipation and joy and nerves maybe. Either way, they didn't have dinner that night, and made excellent use of Kushina's pregnancy hormones.

The Uzumaki clan was known for their ridiculous stamina, and when you added in the pregnancy hormones and the shinobi training they both had, it made for a _very_ healthy sex life. Minato just hoped Jiraiya never put two and two together and used it in one of his books, or the man might find himself castrated courtesy of Kushina.

For the first week everything was fine. The normal anxieties about parenthood came about, but that was overshadowed by his pervasive feeling of joy. Minato, he knew, was a lucky, lucky man.

Then the nightmares started.

Minato was not particularly fond of the more brutal aspects of his shinobi career. He detested killing, but loved Konoha more, so he had done it, and with great skill. He did not get a Flee on Sight order in the bingo books for nothing, and he hadn't ever truly regretted his actions in the war. He would always protect Konoha, and the people within, no matter the cost. Besides, he was a shinobi, and while the majority of them didn't exactly deal in death as the more ignorant civilians liked to think (1), he was a soldier and death was part of the job. And he was one of the best.

That was why the nightmares were so confusing.

He'd had them before, after particularly horrific missions where the deaths of the enemy weighed on him more than he would ever admit, or where a comrade didn't make it home. They'd grown more infrequent as he got older, as he developed the mental callouses needed to do his job. And on the nights where it got to be too much, Kushina held him silently, and giving her support in that uncharacteristically gentle way she had that somehow still betrayed her strength, and reminded him that he was still alive, still had something to live for. He returned the favor when she had her bad nights.

But truthfully, this didn't make any sense. He hadn't actually been on a mission since being named Hokage, and he had long since absorbed the mental trauma of the war into a numb fog that wouldn't be forgotten—war was never forgotten—but wasn't crippling either. He hadn't had a nightmare about Iwa-nin killing Kushina or for _years_.

The old dream was so familiar Minato could recall every detail, down to the kind of clothing, the time of day and the dialogue. He and Kushina would be walking down the streets of Konoha, when Iwa-nin would leap out of the shadows and slit her throat before he could move. It always ended with laughter, and the Iwa nin fading away as he knelt over Kushina's body. In the new and improved version, Kushina held a blond haired blue-eyed baby in her arms, and Minato was made to watch as Iwa-nin drowned his son.

It was horrific, and he uncharacteristically worried that the dreams meant he wasn't supposed to be a father, or that he would be a crappy one.

Inadequacy was an unfamiliar fear for him. He wasn't entirely sure what to do with it.

He had always been taught, it seemed. He learned how to be a shinobi and a teacher from Jiraiya, how to be a Hokage from Hiruzen, and how to be a man from Kushina. She was very adept at hitting him when he was acting like a bad husband, and so he learned _very_ quickly. No one was there to teach him how to be a father. Not even his own, since the old man walked out on him and his mother when he was three.

Minato wanted more than anything to be a good father. The kind of father who seemed to know everything, who laughed with his child, who could teach him everything the kid needed to know in order to deal with the shinobi world. But he had no idea how to do it.

He suffered through the nightmares and worries for a few weeks, with Kushina growing increasingly worried. She tried to help him overcome it, always held him through the nightmares, tried to assure him in that tough-love way of hers that he was going to be a great father.

It didn't really work.

He was thrilled of course. He already felt so much love for this child, his son. It was nigh-soul crushing, and it even surpassed the love he held for his wife. But that only made his anxiety worse, his fears grew, and he was having trouble sleeping even on nights where the nightmares didn't come.

Then one day, Kushina came running to the tower, demanding to see him and despite the possible upcoming crisis with Suna he dragged his wife halfway to the hospital—he wasn't going to try and hiraishin a pregnant woman anywhere—before she managed to tell him she and the baby were fine.

He was kicking.

It was with great reverence that Minato placed his hand on her ballooning belly. Within seconds, the baby started pushing against him, straining through Kushina's skin to kick his hand. He smiled, and very carefully, used a basic medical ninjutsu to connect his chakra system with his child's and his wife's.

It was something like the sun.

Kushina had a ridiculous amount of chakra, and due to the special nature of it that allowed her to cage the Kyuubi properly, it had a sharp edge. Though usually warm and inviting, her chakra felt something like a falsely benign sea that could turn to corrosive acid at any moment.

Naruto, he could tell, would not be the same.

He had deep reserves already, nearly equal to that of the average three-year-old, which was absolutely unheard of to find in an unborn child. But this chakra network was bright, was so deep and warm, and felt a little like a summer wind, carrying the light of the sun in gentle breezes. It was like being pulled into something so genuine, so inherently likable, that he couldn't help but grin and feel content.

His little baby. His child, his little sun.

He wondered if the boy would have wind or water chakra, if he would take after him or Kushina. Wind was rare in Konoha, and he was one of three that had it. Water was more common, but not by much. It was too soon to tell, but either way, his boy would be a surprise on any battlefield.

And it _was_ a boy, he realized. He could feel that through the light diagnostic jutsu he was using here. Kushina had been right, he noted with little surprise. It was, as he'd long since learned, futile to argue with Kushina once she got these little inklings, and more frustrating to him was that she was always right about them. He had a feeling now that she might be right about the rest as well.

What was he going to be like? Would he share more traits with Kushina or him? Would he be able to learn Hiraishin? What were his dreams going to be? Who would he hang out with? What would he like to eat?

The questions went on, and blazed through his mind. He had always loved his son, but now he wanted to get to know him, and see him open his eyes and learn everything about him in the space of a second.

It was, though Minato didn't realize it, the moment that taught him what fatherhood was.

That night he did not sleep. He stayed at the tower with Kushina, because she refused to leave until he did, and drafted a treaty with Iwa that was a helluva lot stronger than the cease-fire that ended the war. With it, Iwa would become a potential ally down the road— _way_ down the road—and would be unable to attack Konoha for at least as long as the current Tsuchikage was alive. Both countries would return the remaining POWs and Konoha, having been very prosperous thanks to their win, would give small financial packages to the families that lost people in the war, as an exchange for the restrictive peace clauses.

It wouldn't, of course, replace the people they lost, but it would at least show Konoha's willingness to help others, even those she bested, and display their overall strength. Other villages may not hold the ideology of the Shodaime, but the Will of Fire could be felt by anyone. Hopefully, it would even begin to foster ties to Iwa, and maybe prevent a future war.

Traditionally, it was the loser of a war that came to the winner with treaties, as a sacrifice to their pride. Minato did not particularly care, thought it was an utterly stupid practice, and completely ignored Danzo when he suggested that Minato cared nothing for Konoha's image.

Minato told him that if he thought hurting the weak was strength, he could get the hell out of Konoha.

And all the while, he thought of his son, his little sun, his Naruto. He was going to make the world a safer place for him until he was strong enough to defend himself and the village if it was the last thing he did.

Iwa and Konoha's ambassador squads met on neutral ground—tea country. Neither Kage came, as that might actually be detrimental to the peace talks, but the ninja sent knew exactly what each of their respective nations was willing to give up for peace, and what they had to go home accomplishing.

The talks went well. Iwa was in bad shape physically, as a lot of the fighting had taken place inside or just outside their borders. Money was tight, and any influx in cash was highly appreciated, especially because welfare benefits for shinobi families now without a provider ate up a good forty percent of their budget. With the treaty, they could focus more effort on rebuilding their infrastructure and stimulating trade. It really was a very good solution, one they had been searching fruitlessly for.

However, they did reject a few of the clauses in the treaty.

They did not dissolve their alliances with Kumo and Kiri. They did not agree to aid Konoha in the case of war. They did not agree to take Konoha nin out of their bingo books.

They did, however, agree to stop actively hunting them, agreed not to attack them in case of another war, and agreed, of course, to never instigate war with Konoha, so long as the current Tsuchikage was in power.

Konoha found these terms perfectly acceptable. The parties returned to their respective homes five days later and delivered the good news to the Kage.

There were celebrations in both villages that night. Minato did not take part in them. He was too busy drafting a treaty with Kumo.

The process was repeated, and ended in a very similar manner. Minato would have sent one to Kiri, but there was too much internal strife there to expect anything to come from any proposed treaty. He would wait until things settled down there before he asked anything of them.

Suna was already an ally, having sided with them against the other two in the war, and none of the smaller nations held any threat against Konoha at the moment.

Minato went to sleep the night Kumo replied with a smile on his face. The nightmares never bothered him again.

Later, many would whisper about how auspicious it was, how _fateful_ , that Minato's love for Naruto had inspired him to look for peace, like so many who came after. When mentioned, Naruto would only stare at them blankly before loudly proclaiming that his "old man" was just being what he always was: an excellent hokage.

His friends looked at him, saw him bear the weight of nations on his shoulders, and couldn't help but wonder if there was something to all that destiny nonsense after all.

Of course, they valued their sanity enough to never say such things around Naruto. The baka would chase them until they acquiesced to the power of individual choice over circumstance or they distracted him with ramen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (1) Many speculate that all the ninja in the series regularly carry out assassination missions and the like. We know that the ANBU certainly do this, seeing as it's in the name, but it does not seem likely that the general ninja population regularly does so, especially against random civilians who have angered someone to the point of putting a hit out on them. Frankly I don't see how it would be possible for a society like that to exist. I think it far more likely that assassination missions are carried out by ANBU at the behest of the Daimyo. Minato's comment here refers to this. There's no denying that ninja kill, but in general it seems to be constrained to fights between other shinobi. If I were a Daimyo, I'd only allow a village to form if they agreed to refuse civilian assassination missions without my stamp of approval. It would be a good way to earn public support and military strength.
> 
> Love inspires peace. I don't know how much I can agree with this in practice, but it's a nice thought.
> 
> Anyway. Next up is Sarutobi Hiruzen. Constructive criticism is always appreciated


End file.
